See Your Brands Through Your Customers’ Eyes

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Volkswagen and Trek team up to bundle bicycles with cars. American Airlines, Citibank, and Visa jointly offer a credit card. Subaru markets an L.L. Bean edition of its Outback station wagon. Dell stamps Microsoft and Intel logos on its computers. Toys R Us partners with Amazon.com to launch an on-line toy store.

The interweaving of brands, now commonplace in business, is changing the rules of brand management. Back when most brands succeeded or failed on their own merits—the quality of the products or services they represented, their positioning in the marketplace, the appeal of their advertising campaigns—it was sufficient to manage them as stand-alone entities. Today, brand management is considerably more complicated. It requires close attention to the often complex intersections between the brands of different companies. Do Volkswagen’s marketers have to keep Trek in mind when they’re making a decision about the VW brand? Absolutely. Does L.L. Bean have to keep an eye on Subaru? You bet.

Yet we contend that one of the central tools of brand management—portfolio mapping—has not kept pace with changes in the marketplace. It still reflects two outdated assumptions: that companies need to concentrate only on their own brands and that each brand manager works on one brand at a time. A traditional brand map arranges a company’s brands along organizational lines, with little regard to how the brands influence customer perceptions and with no regard to how they connect with brands of other companies. We believe it’s high time that marketers abandoned this old approach. What’s needed is an entirely new mapping tool that reflects the way brands actually appear to customers. In this article, we’ll describe such a tool and show how it can be used to create multidimensional maps—we call them brand portfolio molecules—that reveal the relationships among diverse brands and provide a powerful new way to think about brand strategy.

Portfolios Redefined

A great deal has been written about managing brand portfolios in recent years. You’re probably familiar with a lot of the jargon: ingredient brands, flanker brands, brand extensions, and so on. Such terms have served a useful purpose. They’ve helped companies think through the different roles played by the brands they own. Today, however, they can do more harm than good. Why? Because they impose an inwardly focused, company-centric view of a brand portfolio—a view that’s out of sync with the realities of the market.

We use a much broader definition of brand portfolio. We include in a company’s portfolio all the brands that factor into a consumer’s decision to buy, whether or not the company owns them. Dell’s brand portfolio, for example, would include Pentium and Windows. Citibank’s would include American Airlines. (We use the term brand system to refer to all the brands a company owns.) In many cases, moreover, a portfolio should not include every brand a company owns. Take Unilever’s Dove and Lever 2000 soap brands. Research indicates that to a Dove customer, the Lever 2000 brand is irrelevant; it exerts no influence over the buying decision. As a result, Lever 2000 should be excluded from the Dove portfolio.

We include in a company’s portfolio all the brands that factor into a consumer’s decision to buy, whether or not the company owns them.

When you think about brand portfolios in this new way, the traditional approach to brand mapping falls apart. A conventional map arranges all of a company’s brands into a simple hierarchy, with the corporate brand at the top. A traditional brand map for Philip Morris, for example, would show the Philip Morris brand as an umbrella over the divisional brands—Miller, Kraft, and so forth. Each divisional brand in turn serves as an umbrella over individual product or product-category brands. Kraft, for instance, is over Maxwell House, which is over Maxwell House Master Blend. The advantage of such a hierarchy is that it allows all the brands owned by a company to be shown on a single page. The disadvantage is that it reflects the view from inside, emphasizing the reporting relationships of brand managers in the organization. It ignores the customer.

So how can you put the buyer’s point of view first, while still retaining some semblance of organizational order? The answer lies in a 360-degree perspective—one that reflects both the workings of the internal organization and the perceptions of the external marketplace. Brand mapping, in other words, needs to become three-dimensional.

The Brand Portfolio Molecule

That brings us to the brand portfolio molecule. In a molecule map, individual brands take the form of atoms, and they’re clustered in ways that reflect how customers see them. Take a look at the exhibit “The Miller High Life Brand Molecule.” Miller High Life is one of the many beer brands sold by Philip Morris’s Miller Brewing subsidiary, and this molecule indicates the complex relationships it has with other Miller brands as well as with the brands of other companies. We’ll use this example to explain the elements of a portfolio molecule.

The Miller High Life Brand Molecule

The first thing you notice is that the centermost atom is not the High Life brand but the general Miller brand. That’s because beer drinkers’ impressions of High Life are determined more by the general Miller name than by the High Life brand itself. In any molecule, the central atom is always the most influential brand—what we call the lead brand—whether it’s the brand being mapped or not. Note also the wide assortment of brands included in the molecule. Some, like Miller Genuine Draft and Miller Lite, are other Miller brands. But then there are the brands of organizations that Miller sponsors, like NASCAR and the NFL, which also influence the way consumers view the High Life brand. We even include Blind Date; a series of rock concerts promoted by Miller Genuine Draft, because of the influence it’s had over young people’s perceptions of the Miller name. We don’t include most other Philip Morris brands, like Kraft or Marlboro, as they have little or no impact on the decisions of beer buyers.

We use the size, shade, and location of atoms to indicate different characteristics of brands. Size represents role. The largest atom in the portfolio is the lead brand. Midsize atoms are strategic brands. They exert a strong influence over buyers, either blocking competitors from poaching current customers (as the slogan “Miller Time” does for High Life) or luring new users to the product (as Miller Genuine Draft does). The smallest atoms in the portfolio are support brands—they can help seal the deal with customers. The Dallas Cowboys and the Super Bowl, both of which Miller sponsors, play supporting roles for High Life. Atoms of any size that have open links as well as links to other atoms are nodes. These brands provide connections to other portfolios. In the High Life example, Philip Morris, NASCAR, and the NFL are nodes.

Shade indicates whether the brand exerts a positive influence (light), a negative influence (dark), or a neutral influence (medium) on the customer’s buying decision. In the High Life molecule, the slogan “Miller Time” is light because it has created a strong sense of community among High Life drinkers. Miller Lite, on the other hand, is dark because it tends to undermine High Life’s appeal to drinkers of heartier beers. Miller Park, the baseball stadium of the Milwaukee Brewers, has a neutral influence and thus is medium. Brands are considered neutral when buyers are aware of them but have not developed strong feelings, either positive or negative, toward them.

Location has two facets. First is proximity, which indicates the relatedness of market positionings. Miller Genuine Draft and Miller Reserve are both near High Life, indicating similar positionings (and a potential for confusing customers). Miller Lite is farther away, indicating a more distinct positioning. The second facet of location is linkage. Links between atoms indicate the company’s relationship to the brands. A single link, like that between Miller and Miller Lite, shows that a Miller manager has a direct relationship with Lite. A string of links shows an indirect relationship, like that between a Miller manager and the NFL. The width of the link indicates degree of control. The thicker the link, the easier it is for Miller’s managers to wield control over that brand. While High Life’s brand team can, for example, exert significant influence over Miller Genuine Draft, a sister brand, it has much less influence over NASCAR, an outside partner with many other sponsors.

No doubt, there is quite a bit going on in a brand portfolio molecule. But that’s as it should be. After all, there’s a lot going on in the marketplace that influences the choices customers make. The usefulness of the molecule tool lies in its ability to show all these forces in a clear, graphical way.

Creating a Brand Molecule

Let’s look at the three steps involved in creating a brand molecule: taking inventory of the brands that influence customers’ perceptions and choices, classifying those brands, and mapping the molecule. As an example, we’ll walk through the process as it might play out for General Motors’ Cadillac brand, and we’ll show how the resulting molecule sheds new light on Cadillac’s brand strategy. Several years ago, we worked extensively with the Cadillac marketing team, and our interest in the challenges facing the brand comes from that work. What we say here, however, is based on a more recent, independent analysis of Cadillac, for which we interviewed luxury car buyers and drew on publicly available data. It represents solely our views on Cadillac’s brand strategy.

Taking Inventory.

Determining which brands should or should not be included in a molecule takes a fair bit of digging—several weeks of effort are usually involved. You can’t just grab information off a trademark list from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark lists often contain lots of duplications, and they seldom include the names of important marketing partners. Instead, you have to undertake a broad brainstorming effort, asking managers from across your organization—R&D, manufacturing, promotions, sales—to list any brands they feel should be considered for the portfolio. Existing market research—quantitative brand-tracking studies, focus groups, home use tests, and so on—can also be a valuable source of information. The intent at the outset is to be as inclusive as possible; you don’t want to overlook potentially critical brands.

The master list of brands then has to be pruned down to those that have a demonstrated impact on customers’ buying decisions. Again, existing market research can be valuable. Data on customer awareness, purchase intent, and switching behavior can provide an initial screen. But don’t expect to get all the answers from available data. You’ll probably need to gather additional information. We’ve found that focus groups and on-line quantitative surveys can often help fill in the data gaps. Whatever you do, don’t rush through this step. It should be a highly iterative process with many rounds of discussion and analysis.

In thinking about the brands that influence the potential Cadillac buyer, at least a dozen familiar names come to mind, including General Motors, Cadillac itself, the nickname “Caddie,” and the various Cadillac subbrands, such as Seville, DeVille, Eldorado, and Catera. Less well-known but nonetheless influential brands include concept cars such as the Steinmetz Catera, engineered by Steinmetz-Opel in Germany, and Evoq, designed by Cadillac.

The array of branded features used in Cadillac cars must also be considered. Brands that GM or Cadillac owns, such as OnStar, StabiliTrak, Magnasteer, Twilight Sentinel, PASS-Key II, and Zebrano wood, make the cut, as well as brands owned by suppliers, such as Bose sound systems, Bosch brakes, and Michelin tires.

That’s not all. New York’s Potamkin dealership deploys a substantial marketing budget of its own. Put it in as a proxy for all dealers? Of course. The Senior PGA Golf Tour, which Cadillac sponsors, is another relevant brand. Cadillac is the “official car” of Pebble Beach, so the golf resort goes on the list, too. And we can’t forget the ghosts of Cadillac past. Remember, if consumers consider a brand as part of their purchase decisions, that brand belongs in the molecule, whether or not the company controls the brand and whether or not the brand still exists in the market. The Fleetwood, the Cimarron, and the Allante—all discontinued Cadillac models that continue to influence customer impressions—belong on the list. We’d even argue for the inclusion of Elvis Presley, perhaps the most famous owner of Cadillacs.

The exhibit “A First Cut at the Cadillac Brand Inventory ” shows the final list of relevant brands, arranged according to traditional brand-management categories. We find it best to start with traditional categories, as they’re the ones brand teams are most familiar with. In the next step, we’ll reclassify the brands into more meaningful categories.

A First Cut at the Cadillac Brand Inventory Taking inventory is the first step in creating a brand portfolio molecule. The list of relevant brands in the Cadillac brand portfolio is arranged here according to traditional brand-management categories.

Classifying.

Once you have a well-vetted list of brands, you need to classify each one as lead, strategic, or support; gauge the kind and degree of influence it exerts; and determine its relative market positioning. To do so, ask yourself five questions:

How important is this brand to customers’ purchase decisions about the brand being mapped?

Is its influence positive or negative?

What market position does this brand occupy relative to the other brands in the portfolio?

How does this brand connect to the other brands in the portfolio?

How much control do you have over this brand?

You may already have the answers to many of these questions, thanks to the data you reviewed and the thinking you did in completing the inventory. (Indeed, much of the classification can usually be done at the inventory stage.) Rank-order purchase intent data, for example, help define a brand’s role; switching data can provide insight into influence; promotional pieces like print ads and mail inserts can help with connection; and organization charts and trademark ownership lists can help determine level of control. Inevitably, though, you’ll need to make some judgment calls. Don’t be afraid to trust your team’s wisdom, but try to keep purely subjective judgments to a minimum.

In classifying the Cadillac portfolio, we start by determining the lead brand. In this case (unlike in the Miller High Life case), our interviews with potential customers show that the Cadillac name itself exerts the biggest influence over luxury car buyers. So Cadillac is the lead brand. We also draw heavily on customer research to classify the other brands. OnStar and Night Vision, both ingredient brands in the traditional hierarchy, are important factors in customers’ purchases. Therefore, they’re classified as strategic brands. General Motors, usually on top of the traditional brand hierarchy, falls to the bottom of our categorization. It does not play a big role in customers’ decisions, so it’s a support brand. The various subbrands also play different roles. STS, a model with a distinct and strong positioning to consumers, assumes a strategic position, while its less influential sister product, SLS, takes a support position. The classification proceeds in this way until all the brands are categorized.

To gauge influence, we asked Cadillac owners why they bought their cars. Branded features, like StabiliTrak and OnStar, were high on the list and thus get positive ratings. We determined positioning by asking customers to compare sets of brands. We found that Catera, for example, is seen as very different from traditional Cadillac models, with a positioning distinct from the lead brand. We reviewed public data and Web sites to uncover brand connections. We found that while Cadillac brand managers work directly with dealers like Potamkin, they have indirect relationships with marketing partners like Le Mans Racing.

Determining the degree of control Cadillac has over each brand is fairly straightforward. Roughly one-third of the brands in the portfolio are controlled by the Cadillac brand management group. Cadillac has much less influence over branded features supplied by outside companies, such as Bose audio systems, which are often shared with many competing car companies. It also has limited influence over GM-owned features, which are often shared with sister divisions and even competitors. For example, OnStar is now available in other GM cars and will soon be offered in Toyota’s U.S. models. Also, while Cadillac may exercise influence over dealers and the organizations it sponsors, it certainly does not control them.

The last step is to note which brands in the portfolio are nodes. For Cadillac, General Motors serves as a node to many other brand portfolios, such as Chevrolet and Buick, as does Potamkin, which sells other car lines. OnStar is also a node since it is available in other brands of cars.

By the end of the classification phase, you should have a spreadsheet or table that measures each brand across the five key dimensions: importance to purchase, influence on purchase, positioning, connections, and degree of control. We show such a chart for the Cadillac analysis in the exhibit “Data Table for the Cadillac Portfolio.” From this analysis, we can reclassify the brand inventory according to role and degree of control, as shown in the exhibit “The Cadillac Brand Portfolio.”

Data Table for the Cadillac Portfolio To create the data table, make a numbered list of all brands in the inventory. Based on your answers to the questions in the classification phase, assign numeric values for each brand along the five dimensions as follows: Importance (size): lead brand = 2.0, strategic = 1.5, support = 1.0; Influence (shade): positive = 1.0, negative = -1.0, neutral = 0; Positioning (location): coordinates on the axes reflect market positioning—those brands with similar positionings are assigned coordinates close to one another; those with distinct positionings receive coordinates in separate quadrants; Connections (links): for each brand, indicate which of the other brands connect to it by marking their list number(s); Degree of control (thickness of links): high = 75%, medium = 50%, low = 25%, 0% = none

The Cadillac Brand Portfolio The Cadillac brand inventory is reclassified above according to role (how important each brand is to the customer’s decision to buy) and degree of control (how much influence Cadillac’s brand managers have over each brand).

Mapping the Molecule.

This step is the easiest. It’s a matter of putting the data into a 3-D modeling program like Strata Studio Pro or Academic Meta-Creations Infini-D. (If you don’t have such software, don’t despair. You can map a molecule using pen and paper, as described in the exhibit “A Low-Tech Approach.”) For a company with few brands, mapping should take one to five days. When we mapped the brand portfolio of Ping, the golf club manufacturer, it took about four days to plot the 57 brands involved. Bigger portfolios will take more time.

A Low-Tech Approach Although we recommend using 3-D modeling software to map brand molecules, it is possible to draw them by hand or with a word-processing program. This chart shows how the Miller High Life molecule would look using a low-tech approach. The size and shade of the typeface indicate each brand’s role and influence, and the length and width of connecting lines indicate positioning and degree of control. All the information in a 3-D molecule can be captured in the hand-drawn version, though brand relationships are less dramatically portrayed.

Mapping, it should be noted, is not a one-shot deal. The first draft should be viewed as just that: a draft. You need to present it to your brand team and encourage them to poke holes in it. Typically, the discussions will raise questions about the underlying classification. Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board and refine the classification, even gathering new data if necessary. Expect to go through a number of versions. Always push to find new connections among brands, to debate the levels of control, and to question the relative importance assigned to each atom. These discussions, as much as the resulting map, will help you challenge your marketing assumptions and gain new insight into your brand strategy.

For instance, if you realize that two equally important strategic brands lie in very different positions, you may want to split the portfolio into two separate portfolios—we call that tactic “partitioning” the molecule. The two portfolios should be managed separately, to maintain their distinctiveness to customers. On the other hand, a molecule that has two or more strategic brands in close proximity may indicate a need to combine brands. Miller, for example, may want to think hard about maintaining High Life, Genuine Draft, and Reserve as separate brands. (A molecule’s ability to display brand overlaps can be particularly valuable in the wake of a merger.) In constructing a molecule, you can also identify opportunities for brand extensions (where holes exist), umbrella brands (where clusters exist), and other branding tactics that can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing.

Interpreting the Cadillac Molecule

The Cadillac molecule is shown in the exhibit “A Molecular View of the Cadillac Brand.” So what does it tell us? To answer that question, we need first to briefly review Cadillac’s existing brand strategy. For much of the twentieth century, Cadillac dominated the U.S. luxury car market. As recently as 1994, it sold 210,686 cars, accounting for a market share of more than 30%. However, Cadillac has since slipped precipitously. Its customer base has aged, and it has been unable to attract younger buyers to its brands, as competitors like Mercedes and BMW have. By 1999, Cadillac had slid to third in the luxury car rankings, behind Mercedes and Lexus, with Lincoln and BMW close behind. In a market that grew 50% over that time span, Cadillac’s volume shrank by 15%. Its market share was down to just over 17%.

A Molecular View of the Cadillac Brand

At the moment, Cadillac’s brand strategy appears to focus on using product subbrands to attract two very different sorts of buyers. It is using the slicker Seville STS and Catera models to bring in new, younger customers while using Eldorado and DeVille to retain older, more traditional customers. It has revamped its advertising to make the overall image of the brand more youthful; the campaign emphasizes the cutting edge technology embedded in the vehicles, as represented by branded features like OnStar and Night Vision. And, to encourage greater innovation and responsiveness among its employees, Cadillac has put in place a new organizational structure for the brand, with separate marketing managers and budgets for each major car line.

Despite the intensity of the efforts, the Cadillac brand continues to decline. We think the brand molecule indicates why. It shows that the major thrusts of the company’s brand strategy are flawed. First, and most obviously, the company’s image is mainly set by the Cadillac brand itself; trying to change that image by promoting product subbrands probably won’t work. We can also immediately see that the old nickname “Caddie” continues to bear an intense relationship to Cadillac—Caddie lies virtually on top of the Cadillac brand. DeVille, for most consumers, is also almost synonymous with Cadillac and thus lies close to the Cadillac sphere. The image of Cadillac, in other words, continues to be shaped by brands that are tied to the company’s past and to its older, traditional customers—and that directly contradicts the company’s advertising strategy. Unless Cadillac decides to kill these brands, or at least avoid advertising them, it will have a tough time changing its image.

The image of Cadillac continues to be shaped by brands that are tied to the company’s past and to its older, traditional customers—and that directly contradicts Cadillac’s advertising strategy.

In contrast to the older brands, Catera lies much farther away from the Cadillac lead brand. That’s a direct result of the division’s attempt to position that car to be distinct from the main brand—clearly, a case where a product marketing strategy undermines the broader brand strategy. Intended as a silver-bullet brand that would attract younger customers to the Cadillac brand, Catera is unlikely to fulfill that mission. It may well be a successful car, if judged on its own, but it simply lacks the influence over customers to make a measurable impact on perceptions of Cadillac. A silver-bullet brand might indeed be a solution for Cadillac, but it would have to be positioned much closer to the lead brand—in the way that Apple positioned the iMac near the Macintosh brand.

The money spent to hype high-tech features like OnStar and Northstar could, moreover, backfire. Because these brands are shared with other automobile lines that often have very different market positions (think of Toyota), they could distort perceptions of the Cadillac brand.

Put bluntly, a brand manager, using the molecule approach, might well reverse virtually every aspect of recent Cadillac strategy. That’s what can happen when you see your brands as your customers do.

Chris Lederer and

Sam Hill are founders of Helios Consulting Group in New York. They are the authors of The Infinite Asset, to be published this fall by Harvard Business School Press. Hill is also the coauthor of Radical Marketing (HarperBusiness, 1999).

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